000 000 111 (Nikolos Negroponet's fundamental article on the digital economy for 1995, part 3)
An article that “started” the digital economy.
Part 1 , Part 2 .
Message: 21
Date: 3.1.95
From: <nicholas@media.mit.edu>
To: <lr@wired.com>
Topic: Double Agents
')
When you assign someone to mow the lawn, wash your car or clean your suit, a small part of your personal life is at stake. When you transfer the management of your medical, legal or financial affairs to another person, the fulfillment of these tasks, on the contrary, depends on your willingness to disclose very personal information. Although vows and laws may protect some confidentiality, there is no real regulatory protection against intimate knowledge leaks by your assistants. This leakage is carried out solely by trust and mutual respect.
In the digital world, such high respect and real confidence will be harder to achieve, given the lack of real or perceived values in the inhuman system. In addition, the society of electronic agents will be able to communicate much more efficiently than a gathering of cooks, maids, chauffeurs and butlers. Rumors become facts and travel at the speed of light.
As I constantly argue in articles and lectures that intelligent agents are the unconditional future of computing, people always ask me about confidentiality. However, the question is usually raised without a deep understanding of how serious the issue of confidentiality is. Since many of my speeches are delivered to senior executives straight to their trendy resorts, I sometimes announce that I made an agreement with the hotel management about getting a list of films that audience members watched in their rooms the night before (the male half of the audience usually prevails). Since half of the people in the audience turn red, I admit that I am joking. But no one laughs. This is quite indicative, but far from funny.
Suddenly our smallest actions leave digital traces. At present, these “bit prints” are isolated instances of very small parts of our life. But over time, they will expand, overlap and interact with each other. Blockbuster, American Express and your local phone company can suddenly combine their bits with a few keystrokes and learn a lot about you. This is just the beginning: every credit card, every supermarket checkout and every mail delivery can be added to the equation. Extrapolate this trend and, sooner or later, you will only be an approximation of your own computer model. Does it bother you?
It does not bother me, and I will explain why. The data relating to whom I called, what I observed, and where I ate, is not very interesting compared to why I did it, or compared to any consistent information from my occupation (I liked the food, my guest liked , or none of us liked it, but we did not want to admit it). The fact that I have eaten somewhere is almost meaningless if the intention and the result are unknown. Purpose, intention and subsequent feelings are much more important than the action or choice. I leave only a few digital crumbs for the direct marketing community, revealing, for example, the fact that I had lunch somewhere. Interesting data is collected by the agent who placed the order, and then asked me how my evening was.
Today, marketers do reverse engineering of consumer choice to conclude why the decision was made. Advertisers group such demographics to figure out if I can lean toward buying one soap compared to another. Tomorrow this will change. We can tell the computer agent what we want, when we want, and, therefore, how to build a model based on this - the collective thinking of the past, present and future (as far as we know). Such agents will be able to display and filter information and anonymously allow the digital market to know that we are looking for something.
In this scenario, there will be two types of agents: one will remain at home (on your wrist, in your pocket, on your radio), and one will live on the network, searching on your behalf, sending messages back and forth. To some extent, domestic bodies can be hermetically sealed. They will read bitstreams about things and services transmitted in abundance through wired and wireless channels. They will dig up a subset of personal interest information — act as easy as if they grab a coupon for a promotion for you, and as difficult as if they determine your interest in a talk show. These agents will be “all in attention”.
Messenger agents will be more complex. They will function in the same way as today, when they make a world tour in search of interesting things and people. We are in that period of time in history when the network is small enough for some to believe that Mosaic and other viewing tools are the only future. This is not true. Even today, people who search online are different in that they have time for it. In the future, there will be almost as few people online as today in libraries. Agents will do this for most of us.
These online agents are those we need to worry about when it comes to privacy. They must be protected from unauthorized access, and we must find ways to prevent new forms of abduction of people (agents). Sounds silly? Wait for the courts to suffer about whether intellectual agents can testify against us.
Security and privacy are closely intertwined. The government asks us to sail in the ocean of data, but it wants us to board our (clippers) ships at any time. This angered Wired (* the monthly magazine published in San Francisco and London. Writes about the impact of computer technology on culture, economics, and politics) and has been the subject of huge debates in Wired and other places. I yawned. That's why.
Encryption is not limited to one layer. If I want to send you a secret message, I promise you that I can do it without the risk that anyone else can decipher it. I simply add an additional level of encryption over the data using unbreakable code. Such codes do not necessarily have to be the magic of mathematicians or the result of massive electronics, they can be simple, but safe.
To prove this, I placed 105 lines of 12 bits each on the basis of my book Be Digital. These bits contain a message. I bet you can never decipher it. If classes of mathematics students want to try, then go ahead. Wired Magazine will appreciate you. But don't waste too much time. It's not as simple as the title of this story: James Bond.
Part 1 , Part 2 .
Message: 21
Date: 3.1.95
From: <nicholas@media.mit.edu>
To: <lr@wired.com>
Topic: Double Agents
')
When you assign someone to mow the lawn, wash your car or clean your suit, a small part of your personal life is at stake. When you transfer the management of your medical, legal or financial affairs to another person, the fulfillment of these tasks, on the contrary, depends on your willingness to disclose very personal information. Although vows and laws may protect some confidentiality, there is no real regulatory protection against intimate knowledge leaks by your assistants. This leakage is carried out solely by trust and mutual respect.
In the digital world, such high respect and real confidence will be harder to achieve, given the lack of real or perceived values in the inhuman system. In addition, the society of electronic agents will be able to communicate much more efficiently than a gathering of cooks, maids, chauffeurs and butlers. Rumors become facts and travel at the speed of light.
As I constantly argue in articles and lectures that intelligent agents are the unconditional future of computing, people always ask me about confidentiality. However, the question is usually raised without a deep understanding of how serious the issue of confidentiality is. Since many of my speeches are delivered to senior executives straight to their trendy resorts, I sometimes announce that I made an agreement with the hotel management about getting a list of films that audience members watched in their rooms the night before (the male half of the audience usually prevails). Since half of the people in the audience turn red, I admit that I am joking. But no one laughs. This is quite indicative, but far from funny.
Suddenly our smallest actions leave digital traces. At present, these “bit prints” are isolated instances of very small parts of our life. But over time, they will expand, overlap and interact with each other. Blockbuster, American Express and your local phone company can suddenly combine their bits with a few keystrokes and learn a lot about you. This is just the beginning: every credit card, every supermarket checkout and every mail delivery can be added to the equation. Extrapolate this trend and, sooner or later, you will only be an approximation of your own computer model. Does it bother you?
Hermes and Hermeticism
It does not bother me, and I will explain why. The data relating to whom I called, what I observed, and where I ate, is not very interesting compared to why I did it, or compared to any consistent information from my occupation (I liked the food, my guest liked , or none of us liked it, but we did not want to admit it). The fact that I have eaten somewhere is almost meaningless if the intention and the result are unknown. Purpose, intention and subsequent feelings are much more important than the action or choice. I leave only a few digital crumbs for the direct marketing community, revealing, for example, the fact that I had lunch somewhere. Interesting data is collected by the agent who placed the order, and then asked me how my evening was.
Today, marketers do reverse engineering of consumer choice to conclude why the decision was made. Advertisers group such demographics to figure out if I can lean toward buying one soap compared to another. Tomorrow this will change. We can tell the computer agent what we want, when we want, and, therefore, how to build a model based on this - the collective thinking of the past, present and future (as far as we know). Such agents will be able to display and filter information and anonymously allow the digital market to know that we are looking for something.
In this scenario, there will be two types of agents: one will remain at home (on your wrist, in your pocket, on your radio), and one will live on the network, searching on your behalf, sending messages back and forth. To some extent, domestic bodies can be hermetically sealed. They will read bitstreams about things and services transmitted in abundance through wired and wireless channels. They will dig up a subset of personal interest information — act as easy as if they grab a coupon for a promotion for you, and as difficult as if they determine your interest in a talk show. These agents will be “all in attention”.
Messenger agents will be more complex. They will function in the same way as today, when they make a world tour in search of interesting things and people. We are in that period of time in history when the network is small enough for some to believe that Mosaic and other viewing tools are the only future. This is not true. Even today, people who search online are different in that they have time for it. In the future, there will be almost as few people online as today in libraries. Agents will do this for most of us.
These online agents are those we need to worry about when it comes to privacy. They must be protected from unauthorized access, and we must find ways to prevent new forms of abduction of people (agents). Sounds silly? Wait for the courts to suffer about whether intellectual agents can testify against us.
Clippers
Security and privacy are closely intertwined. The government asks us to sail in the ocean of data, but it wants us to board our (clippers) ships at any time. This angered Wired (* the monthly magazine published in San Francisco and London. Writes about the impact of computer technology on culture, economics, and politics) and has been the subject of huge debates in Wired and other places. I yawned. That's why.
Encryption is not limited to one layer. If I want to send you a secret message, I promise you that I can do it without the risk that anyone else can decipher it. I simply add an additional level of encryption over the data using unbreakable code. Such codes do not necessarily have to be the magic of mathematicians or the result of massive electronics, they can be simple, but safe.
To prove this, I placed 105 lines of 12 bits each on the basis of my book Be Digital. These bits contain a message. I bet you can never decipher it. If classes of mathematics students want to try, then go ahead. Wired Magazine will appreciate you. But don't waste too much time. It's not as simple as the title of this story: James Bond.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/354592/
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